There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.

Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs; Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave.

What is originality? It is being one's self, and reporting accurately what we see and are.

It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.

We are the children of many sires, and every drop of blood in us in its turn betrays its ancestor.

He that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organ of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing by ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm.